- In August 2026, Republicans and right-leaning social media groups attacked Michigan Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, for supposed possible ties to the Ku Klux Klan via her work at the Southern Poverty Law Center, a prominent civil rights organization.
- In April, the Department of Justice indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center on charges of fraud and money laundering. Prosecutors alleged the organization misled donors by using their money to pay informants in extremist organizations, including the KKK.
- The Department of Justice did not name Benson as a defendant and there is no evidence Benson knew the Southern Poverty Law Center paid informants.
- As of this writing, the courts have not ruled in the case. Legal experts have said the charges are politically driven and that the Justice Department has a weak case.
- We reached out to Benson’s campaign to ask about the claim and await a response.
In August 2026, Republican and right-leaning social media accounts shared posts attempting to tie Michigan Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, to the Ku Klux Klan.
These posts claimed Benson held a leadership role at the Southern Poverty Law Center — a prominent civil rights group known for tracking extremist groups — while it supposedly funneled money to the KKK.
“Secretary of State @JocelynBenson must explain to the people of Michigan her involvement with the Southern Poverty Law Center while it funded radical groups like the KKK and others that committed acts of racism against Americans,” said one X post from the official Michigan House Republicans account.
Similar posts circulated on Facebook. A conservative dark money group, America Next, ran an attack ad tying Benson to the KKK. Snopes readers searched the website for information about whether Benson was involved with the KKK or if she funneled money to it.
These claims are missing significant context. It is true that Benson once served on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s board. However, Snopes previously determined that there was no evidence the SPLC funneled money directly to extremist hate groups. The U.S. Department of Justice has alleged that the SPLC improperly funneled donor money to individual informants in extremist groups, including the KKK.
Benson is not named as a defendant in that case, nor is there any evidence she was involved in the SPLC’s now-defunct practice of paying informants.
We have not rated this claim as the Justice Department’s court case against the SPLC is ongoing as of this writing.
According to a May 2026 report from the The Detroit News, Benson
We reached out to Benson for additional information about her time at SPLC and await a response.
Conservative groups have long criticized the SPLC for allegedly targeting right-wing groups. In 2025, during President Donald Trump’s second term, the FBI severed ties with the SPLC, claiming it “long ago abandoned civil rights work and turned into a partisan smear machine.”
Legal experts have called the Justice Department’s case against the SPLC “not a valid indictment” and potentially a “targeted attack.”
Benson and the SPLC
Benson’s relationship with the SPLC started when she was a 19-year-old unpaid intern who worked as a researcher and undercover investigator. She posed as a freelance journalist to uncover and expose the plans of white supremacist leaders and groups, according to reports of
According to Detroit Legal News, Benson moved to Alabama after college to work at the SPLC full time, which reportedly inspired her to go to law school.
In 2014, Benson joined the SPLC’s board of directors in an unpaid role, where she remained until
“Jocelyn Benson has spent her career advancing the unfinished work of the civil rights movement and expanding economic opportunity, including helping dismantle white supremacist and neo-Nazi extremist networks,” Benson campaign spokesperson Alyssa Bradley reportedly said to Bridge Michigan, a nonpartisan news outlet.
In July, Michigan House Republicans said
If the emails included information about the informant program or the Justice Department’s indictments, Michigan Republicans certainly would have shared that in their news release. They didn’t.
DOJ indictments against SPLC
The indictments allege the SPLC secretly paid informants within various extremist groups more than $3 million in total to supposedly defraud banks and donors from 2014 to 2023, overlapping with Benson’s time as a board director.
However, as of this writing, Benson’s name does not appear in any of the Justice Department’s SPLC indictments.
Contrary to a claim from John James, Benson’s Republican opponent for governor, the indictments also did not claim that the SPLC funneled millions to the KKK, specifically.
According to the indictments, more than $3,500 allegedly went to one KKK member, more than $70,000 went to a former KKK member and more than $160,000 was funneled to an informant who “then sent funds to various violent extremist group leaders including the former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.”
The SPLC has not contested the existence of the informant program, instead stating it had a “long history” of assisting law enforcement using its informants.
“The government is blatantly mischaracterizing our efforts to successfully fight hatred and violent extremism, something we have done for decades,” SPLC’s interim president and CEO, Bryan Fair, said in an April statement. “At one moment, they are appreciating our work in destroying the Klan and now, they are saying the SPLC funded and promoted the Klan.”
The bottom line
It’s true that Benson worked for the SPLC and it’s true that the Justice Department accused the prominent civil rights organization of defrauding donors by secretly paying informants in extremist groups, including the KKK.
However, it’s misleading to claim that Benson has connections to the KKK, particularly because the Justice Department did not name her in the indictments. Furthermore, contrary to the framing of this claim, the SPLC has a long, documented history of fighting white supremacist ideology and filing lawsuits against the Ku Klux Klan. Meanwhile, the Department of Justice has not proven its allegations against the SPLC in court.
That’s not to say the SPLC hasn’t received its fair share of criticism from both sides of the aisle — just that there’s far more evidence the SPLC is anti-KKK than pro-KKK.
